When a guest essayist in the Wall Street Journal went after incoming First Lady Jill Biden for using the title of “Dr.” to reflect her doctorate in education, it prompted a lot of fierce responses.
Here is one of the strongest I have seen.
Stephanie Jones is a Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Georgia in the department of Educational Theory and Practice. She teaches courses on teachers as writers, feminist theory and pedagogy, social class and poverty, early childhood education, and literacy.
By Stephanie Jones
Surely by now, many of you have heard about the Wall Street Journal opinion essay by Joseph Epstein, a name I had never heard before his very public display of first-rate misogyny. This person (aided by a major media outlet) not only targeted an incoming “First Lady” (we can deal with the history of that sexism elsewhere), but a dedicated and accomplished woman educator.
I won’t waste any time defending Dr. Biden’s credentials or accomplishments, because while the essay targeted her as an individual, we can too easily be distracted and divided by getting lost in the details of individual merit when the problem is actually a system of power that Epstein is attempting to reassert and uphold (but here’s a good essay defending Dr. Biden if you’re looking for that). I also don’t need to know Epstein as an individual to understand full well what he’s up to…every woman has experienced belittling by men.
Some of those men have been in our own families, friend groups, workplaces, they have even been our partners; and they have even been strangers on city buses, in grocery stores, at the post office, or on the highway. Some of those men are online acquaintances, jabbing their desperate insults from keyboards located all over the globe.
If he can belittle us, you see, he believes he can control and manipulate us. But to control and manipulate us, he has to convince us that we are beneath him and there is good reason for our subordination. Only when we are beneath him can his molestation take its full effect, and I use that word intentionally.
In her recent book “Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny,” Kate Manne warns “trying to draw attention to the phenomenon [of misogyny] is liable to give rise to more of it,” but acknowledges, “there is no way around this.” There is no way around this, for if we continue to grit our teeth, smile politely, turn our cheek, cry in the bathroom, or just complain quietly to a friend, the assault will continue. And if we yell from the rooftops, confront our abusers, write opinion essays, record songs, fight for new laws, argue with women in our lives who find comfort in their diminished position, start nonprofit organizations, insist on women’s basic human rights, and publish poetry naming misogyny as something that is diffused in our everyday lives, more misogyny will surely come our way.
I’ve done many of the above at one time or another.
I’m 49 years old, so that’s a lot of years of living in a misogynistic world starting when I was a very young child and an adult man abused me. This flowed right into early adolescence where boob-and-ass-grabbing in the hallway was normal, which transformed into late adolescence and early adulthood. There, girls were regularly the butt-end of jokes and were expected to alter themselves and compete against one another for the coveted attention of boys and men. I had no language to make sense of, explain, or push back against what was happening to me – and for that I blame a patriarchal educational system.
The constant presence of misogyny in my life still surprises me, even in my workplace where I still have an occasional student who throws belittling daggers; where I witness and receive patronizing comments from colleagues; where students tell horrifying stories of verbal and physical sexual assault by other students; and where I listen to things that happen in K-12 schools and the constant barrage of sexism and misogyny used to keep girls, women, and LGBTQ students and teachers in their place.
Misogyny is still in full-swing in the United States.
In many ways it has ramped up exponentially through an intensification of the marketing of physical appearance in visually focused social media (think Instagram, snapchat filters, photo editing apps, OnlyFans, and Pornhub). Yes, marketing physical appearance. The body – and especially the girl and woman body – can now be seen more clearly as the objectified commodity that misogyny has always believed it to be.
If it’s not serving as a man’s entertainment, fueling his fantasies, servicing his sexual appetite, fulfilling his domestic needs, supporting his career goals, or helping him acquire power and status, the woman body is useless in the patriarchal, misogynistic world where Epstein lives.
That’s where Epstein’s weak little tantrum shows itself for what it is: Dr. Biden doesn’t check off any of his expectations of what patriarchal power needs from women to survive, so he resorts to misogyny as punishment and to try to force her into one of the boxes that will serve patriarchy.
In short: Shut your trap and take your place beneath your husband Madame, where your presence will uphold his power and maintain appropriate gender relations for all to observe and reproduce.
Well, I suspect Dr. Biden won’t shut her trap and now Epstein has opened another Pandora’s Box of #metoo.2.0. Or more like a We’re Done With This movement. Like the widespread backlash against the #metoo movement, there will undoubtedly be backlash here as well, but we’re used to that and we’re not going anywhere.
In fact, it’s time to be more strategic about our education efforts.
Let’s be more intentional about helping people understand what patriarchy, sexism, and misogyny are and do. For starters, let’s analyze how power operates through gendered relationships presented in movies and books we experience with children; let’s unpack the psychology of Instagram posts, likes, and comments with young people; and let’s study and question the language people use to talk about relationships and sex.
And let’s say these words: Patriarchy. Sexism. Misogyny.
These are not scary words or curse words; they are helpful, productive words to understand and use. Simply speaking, patriarchy is a system of power that maintains domination and control over the subordinate genders (girls, women, and LGBTQ folx); sexism is a system of beliefs that justifies men having power and control; and misogyny is a system of discipline that reprimands and punishes girls, women, LGBTQ folx (and men who aren’t masculine and dominating enough - think about the movements against toxic masculinity and for a fuller humanity for men) for any deviation from the expected patriarchal norms.
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Sexism can seem fairly innocent, it can even be perceived as respectful honoring of tradition, and as long as everyone follows along with sexist beliefs, then the hammer of misogyny doesn’t have to be used. Misogyny is aggressive and hostile, an emergency reaction to a woman or LGBTQ person who has stepped out of bounds. Misogyny might manifest as relationship violence, rape, a demotion or firing, or name-calling; or it might surface as a verbal degrading, intimidation, overt dismissing, joking, sarcasm, or an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal.
A couple years ago I wrote a research article with a colleague about the way misogyny was impacting an elementary-aged Latina student and the editors of the journal (both powerful women whom we respect a great deal) wanted us to take misogyny out of the title and replace the word with sexism in the article. We made our argument about why the word and concept misogyny was necessary because her experience was connected to the violent and disciplinary practices of body-shaming, fat-shaming, and the policy at her elementary school that led to her standing on a scale to be weighed, and then to receive feedback from the adults that she was too big. In the end they agreed to allow us to keep it as it was.
I share this snippet of a story because our society is largely uneducated and miseducated about the systems of power that dehumanize girls, women, and LGBTQ folx. Perhaps this miseducation and uneducation is by design, since it can result in girls, women, and LGBTQ folx themselves seamlessly taking up patriarchal and misogynistic ideas and behavior that serve others and even harm themselves.
Trying to teach these concepts in educational institutions can be challenging. It’s not very common to hear about feminism being taught openly and overtly from kindergarten through university, even though many people are like me and believe strongly that “Feminism is for Everybody.” The field of education itself is steeped in patriarchal hierarchies, so there hasn’t been much space given to educating youth and adults to understand the inherently oppressive systems of patriarchy and how they limit and restrict every person’s humanity.
One might argue that education is no longer a patriarchal system, asserting that it is common to see women in leadership roles in schools and colleges, and they might even point to outgoing Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos as an example of how women have been appointed to high levels of positions. But this argument would reveal another indicator of our miseducation: men don’t have a monopoly on patriarchal beliefs, attitudes, and behavior. Patriarchal systems (and sexism and misogyny – the two main approaches to justifying and maintaining them) cannot exist without the support of women, even if that support is unintentional and/or given unknowingly. So, women can absolutely climb the ranks, but many will still be expected to carry out the policies and practices handed down to them by men.
If you’re in PK-12 schools or in a College of Education (or any higher education), you don’t need me to give you examples of the patriarchal stronghold in the field, you live them every day.
Dr. Biden, as an educator, has faced numerous Epsteins before now, and she will face them again. She is in very close proximity to patriarchal power, from which she has no doubt benefited, and she will no doubt do her part to support some power systems as she supports her partner in the White House.
But who knows?
Epstein might have unwittingly given her an unexpected platform as Dr. Madame First Lady: taking on patriarchy, sexism, and misogyny in education, and we could all benefit from being a part of that movement.
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